George Floyd’s killing was just the spark. Here’s what really made the protests explode.

By Jamila Michener: 

What prompted the worldwide protests against racially biased policing? The simplest answer would be that on May 25, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes, as millions of Americans have now witnessed in a video that went viral. That killing came soon after several other prominent wrongful killings of black people, including that of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT worker shot to death by Louisville police as she lay in her own bed, and Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old man whom local vigilantes accosted and shot as he jogged down a road in Brunswick, Ga.